Raag gets used to India

I sent this as an email to some of my friends on March 27th 2006 when I went to India on a business trip.

I took a day off from work to see my parents in Delhi over the weekend where I met some classmates of mine from Delhi College of Engineering (Friday). It was nice after 3 years to meet them all again. This time we met at Sandeep's house. He is a DIG!! (Observe how well I drop names and my relationship to important people). Well he lives in a decent area near Delhi University and has a huge flat with 3 servants, couple of drivers, and 2 person security detachment!! It is all very impressive. Anyway my friend has this house servant, medium height but looked rather ferocious with a mustache big enough to hang on!! But when he talked to you it was obvious he was a meek man, someone who would not say boo to a mouse. After a while I heard my friend's wife call out to him, guess what his name was; Ghabbar Singh!! I kid you not. Poor man saddled with a name like that. Later Sandeep was kind enough to lend me a cell for the day and told me that since the airports come under his supervision, he would have one of his men come and escort me around and then take the cell phone back. He used hindi to say this "Mere aadmi tumse airport mein milenge", I could not resist asking him, if he was going to add "Tum mujhe woh phone vapis de do nahin to mein Ghabbar ko tumhari ghar bejh doonga"!!

It is astonishing how quickly acclimatized I am becoming to India; not just getting used to more obvious things like hot weather and dirt, but to the roads and the driving habits. In fact I have now become inordinately proud of my driver's skills. On the way to the office there is a place where the road goes from 4 lanes to 2, actually it really does not, but the drivers merely go over the yellow line and drive on the other 2 lanes. Did you not know that lanes don't matter? Then very logically there is an extremely narrow bridge, that allows only 1 lane in each direction. In this stretch, my driver was playing chicken with a bus to our left as to who could get ahead. Earlier I would have cringed, but now I found myself rooting for my driver and thinking, if he could only shift a little faster after each stop he could really get ahead.

When he finally put our nose ahead and won the race, I almost put my hands up. YES! You have no idea how happy I felt at my driver's achievement. But in India I have learned that managers and bosses (addressed as Sir) do not behave in this undignified manner. Observe again how used to India I have become. Note the repeated use of the phrase My Driver.

Last week I asked the my driver to turn into Brigade Road to see what is it that people are raving about. It is extremely crowded but I suppose it is the place to hangout. As we were stopped at another of the traffic jams, (I will no longer explain that I was stuck in a traffic jam, the only reason traffic stops is for a jam), I saw a couple of young guys riding on a motor cycle. The guy in the back had his hand on the shoulder of the driver and in his left hand he had a paper bag with something to eat. Periodically he would put his hand in the bag and eat something from it. Then he did something that surprised me, he took another piece and lovingly fed the driver!! I tried to picture Ravi's reaction to this, but failed!! (Let us say, Ravi is allergic to men touching other men and leave it at that).

We had interviews yesterday during the day at the hotel where I am staying. We invited about 95 candidates and only 55 came for it and we made offers to 3 of them of which I am happy with maybe 2. It is hard.

Later in the evening I went to a mall since everyone talks a lot about them. This one is called Garuda Mall off of MG Road on a road called Commissariat Rd. It is hard to imagine the crush of people, the beleaguered air conditioning was working hard but it was still so warm inside. As far as the mall itself, it is nothing to write home about. 6 to 7 floors tall with a food court on one floor, theatres on the top floor and shops everywhere with mostly over-priced items.

News flash - India beats Raag

I sent this as an email to some of my friends on March 23rd 2006 when I went to India on a business trip.

*** News Flash ***
Raag the ever timid takes strike. On Sunday, his first day he eats at the Chancery hotel and everything is good. The next days he feels emboldened and eats at the office cafetaria and everything is good (or is it?). Thinking he is very much the punter now he attempts to repeat the stroke and eats again on Tuesday at the cafetaria and disaster strikes. He is clean bowled and by the end of the of day, the bathroom is very well acquainted with Raag. Furthermore he has been reduced to fetal position all of wednesday and has retired from the test match!! Henceforth he has decided to eat idlis and dhahi for breakfast, pack idlis with dhahi every day for lunch and eat curd rice with pickle everynight for dinner, all only at Chancery hotel .
*** End News Flash ***

This is good for two reasons.
1) I will be able to survive India.
2) I can prove to certain people, notably my beloved wife Jannavi, my friend Jeshmi, and Jeshmi's mother that I am very easy to feed and I am not at all picky.

On the side, here are some phrases that are funny.

1) I saw a road sign "Hump here", there may even have been the ubiquitous prefix "Please" !! To the pure of heart and mind, go to dictionary.com and check out "Vulgar Slang".
2) My driver has a simple explanation for traffic in Bangalore "Bangalore roads very traffic".

If I like Bangalore for it weather, then I hate its traffic and its roads. The conditions of the roads are such that I think Bangalore is a dream market for shock absorber companies.

Speed bumps here are another story, I am not sure how it is elsewhere, but here I think they took the standard speed bump and then redesigned it in such a way that you cannot get over one at any speed without a spinal injury!!

Less said about traffic and traffic manners the better it is. In a traffic jam, everyone honks, although it is not clear to me yet why they do so. It practically achieves nothing at all. The other guys looks ahead and plows on ignoring it anyway and if he is unable to, he honks back.

Note - Bangalore-philes, please note that most of the comments above may apply to almost all of India. So please do not flame me.

Initial impressions of India

I sent this as an email to some of my friends on March 21st 2006 when I went to India on my first business trip. During the past 6 years before that, I had been to India only once, for a very short while in 2003 and on a personal trip. Jeshmi is a friend of mine who grew up in more affluent circumstances and Krishna always had a sense of his own importance and hence handled these situations with a certain skill

All of you will find this funny, I walk into IonIdea building yesterday morning and the first thing I see is "IonIdea welcomes Mr. Raag Srinivasan" at the front desk !! Later in the evening the HR manager unloaded a boat load of butter on me saying "everybody is singing your praises". I could not resist asking her "what song were they singing".

It has been a while since I worked in India, so it is a little unnerving when people rush to open doors for you. You cannot leave the hotel room without someone outside saying "Good Morning Sir"!! I have to express a desire for water and 2 people will rush to get me bottled water!!

I am a misfit in this environment, but I can see Krishna and Jeshmi thriving in it lording over people although with Jeshmi we all know it is very natural for her.

There is a real class distinction (it always was there), although there are definitely more affluent people than before.

In which Sridhar plays the guessing game

As many of you know, my wife's brother-in-law is Sridhar (my co-brother for those of you who speak Indlish).

The event I am describing here happened several years ago. He was escorting his older daughter to her dance class which was then in some school in Northern Virginia. As it so often happens, the dads of these aspiring dancers hung around the class trying to somehow kill the one hour that seems to drag on like the days before the start of vacations. One such dad who looked like he had landed from India just the previous day, made eye contact and Sridhar felt impelled to introduce himself. So here is the rest of the conversation.

"Hi, My name is Sridhar. What is yours?".

The most unexpected response came back at him, "You guess".

Now Sridhar had not been in India a while and had not moved in FOB circles a lot. So he was nonplussed for a few seconds, but decided that he should humour this person inquired politely "Rakesh?".

The other person had a strained smile in his face but persisted in playing the game said "You guess" again.

Now Sridhar was unsure what to do, he decided to mentally profile him and came up with a list of common names asked "Ramesh, Mahesh, Shailesh, ...?" all in a row.

Visibiliy upset the guy still said forcefully "You guess".

Thankfully, a parallel thread had been running in his brain which told Sridhar, if this guy were recently from India then potentially his accent is suspect and at that instant a flash bulb went in his head and he exclaimed

"You mean, your name is ......!!"

Did you guys figure out what his name was?

Yup it is Yogesh !!

Disclaimer:
The events described above did take place. Jannavi, Sridhar, and Yogesh are real. The conversation between Yogesh and Sridhar did take place in the manner described above. The words of the conversation may not be accurate but I hope the spirit is captured reasonably well here.

After reading the previous edition of this blog, I found some people did not get the joke. Yogesh has a thick Indian accent and pronounced his name as "You Guess"

You Guess = Yogesh

Jannavi meets Super Tim

I have been really lazy; consequently I have not posted on the more than a dozen good books I have read since then. The longer the delay the harder it was to get back on the saddle. Finally I decided to break the logjam and write not about any book, but instead write something, anything.

Some of you may not know this, but my wife, Jannavi, has moved to another job and her first day was just last Monday. She spent early part of Monday at orientation and then met her boss. Although this man is a veteran of almost 2 decades (or maybe because of that) he seemed an extremely informal and relaxed person. He took her to her new office (BTW J has a office, she no longer works in a cube farm!!). Soon after that she jumped straight into her first team meeting. The meeting was already in progress and meeting coordinator was on the phone with someone, who happens to be her colleague working from home.

The coordinator was asking a question, "So Super Tim, What did you do about this so-on-so proposal?". Jannavi assumed that she did not hear the name correctly and waited for more. Her boss promptly chimed in with a question, "Super Tim, did you do XYZ?". Jannavi was really impressed at the informality of her team wondered what her new nickname would be. Dr. J was her first choice (Julius Erving for the basketball neophytes). The meeting came to an end before she could think of many more names. As she made her way back to her new office, she saw an nameplate with an Indian sounding name. On closer look the name was

Supratim Banerjee!!

She is yet to get her nick name!!

Disclaimer:
Supratim is my wife's collegue's first name but I changed the last name for reasons of privacy.

After reading the previous edition of this blog, I found some people did not get the joke. Supratim = Super Tim